Have you been resting on a plateau? Have you fallen asleep in the afternoon of your life? Have you made progress, then sat down to enjoy your success, but forgot to stand back up again?

It’s Time to Take Action Today!

It’s time to awake, to stand up, to stretch those tired, aching muscles and move. It is time to take the next step.

What’s holding you back? What’s in your way? Are there external barriers? Are there internal ones, such as fear and doubt or laziness?

Well, it is time to act anyway.

It’s time to shake off and overcome and break through the walls that stop you, that shut you down and prevent you from moving forward.

It’s time!

Are you still hanging on to that habit?

Are you caught in the eternal delay of procrastination?

Are you waiting for the perfect time to begin? For the weather to clear or the children to move out?

Are you waiting for a sign or a voice or a message to tell you the time is now?

Let this post, this day, right now be that sign, that voice, that message. Why, after all, did I write this post if not to serve that purpose? Why is it affecting you like it is? Why is your heart starting to stir? You feel it, don’t you?

The truth is, you already know it’s time. It’s ALWAYS been time. Now is the ONLY time you have ever had. So get up and take that step. Just get up and do it.

Don’t form a committee. Don’t put it under a microscope. Don’t get a third or fourth or fifth opinion. Just get up and act.

Do it!

“But what if I fail?”

Every single day you don’t take action, you fail one moment, one day at a time, slowly strangling your dreams in the dark and hidden back-alleys of your fears and doubts. Day after day, your hopes bleed a little more, draining life from the muscle fiber of your passion.

So why not give it all you have for one HUGE potential fail and get it over with? Why drag out failure every single day of your life as you decide not to take action and let your dreams whither and dry … and die over and over again, a daily death of neglect?

Imagine if you don’t fail! Of course, you will stumble here and there, but with every stumble, your footing becomes that much surer. Yes, failure may hit hard. But will it hurt any less if you fail daily by your inaction, by self-inflicted suffocation?

Does one big fail hurt more than hundreds and hundreds of daily little failures that prick and stab at your heart?

I know you can feel it deep down inside your soul. It’s the empty ache of incompleteness. So complete it! Fill the void with action, with steps toward doing what you have always felt called to do. Stop delaying your purpose. Stop procrastinating joy. Stop putting off the day of your deliverance as you wake to the inner tick of your life.

It is time. Today. Now.

No more self-afflicted blood-letting. No more leaking your life into the puddles of inaction one day after another. No more. Say that out loud: “No … more!” Say it with feeling: “NO … MORE!”

Now act on that mantra. Let it beat in the chambers of your soul with every thump of your heart and every breath that fills your lungs. No more! … No more! … No more!

Take the next step. From wherever you are currently, in whatever part of your life you have paused. Accept the probability of the possible and move in that direction. Determine what constitutes the next step, and just simply take it!

Failure is not Failure

To put your all into something and fail is no failure at all. It’s living. It’s living boldly. It’s living passionately.

There’s more than one way to die, after all. We also die one breathe at a time as we refuse to exhale our passion onto the world and refuse to breath in the crisp air of our potential.

Besides, failure is nothing less than an investment in your own potential. If life is the university and experience is the classroom, then failure is the lesson being taught by the professor of life. It is the instruction. It is the heart and soul of the classroom.

Your Step

Is your business faltering? Change it. Today. Take the next step toward improving matters.

Is your character built on sand? Change it. Today. Take the next step toward improving matters.

Is your spiritual life isolated, distant and cold? Change it. Today. Take the next step toward improving matters.

You know what I’m talking about. There is something you have always wanted to do. Something you have always wanted to take care of or something you’ve always wanted to master.

What that next step is, is less important than that you take it, any step, so long as it takes you closer to your potential, closer to your dreams, closer to what courses through your veins with every beat of your heart. Once momentum is built, you will have plenty of time to figure out which steps are best and in which order they should be taken. But for now, just move.

Now is the time.

It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be a book you’ve always wanted to write. A business you always wanted to start. An instrument you wanted to play. A relationship you wanted to heal. A person you wanted to forgive. A trait you wanted to develop. Whatever it is, if it’s a worthy destination of itself, it’s worthy of your bare-knuckled action to get there.

The process of getting there is only one decision away. Just one.

Will you stand up or stay seated? Will you wake up or sleep another day? Will you take action or continue to wait and wish and age and regret?

The time is now. Stand up. Decide. Commit. Take that step.

There will always be another missing piece of the puzzle, another bit of vital information you simply must discover first before starting.

Stop!

You know exactly what you’re doing. You know it’s just another way to keep yourself from taking the leap off the pier into the murky waters of “what if.” So stop pretending the next book or post or article you read will finally be the point after which you begin. You already know that’s a lie you tell yourself to stay on the grassy knoll of life, immobile, unchallenged, mediocre.

A Call to Boldness, not Stupidity

This is not a call to abandon common sense or to live with reckless abandon to parental or other responsibilities. Rather, it’s a call to stop hiding behind fear and doubt and a litany of self-defeating excuses that bind you to a life lived somewhere south of your true potential and joy.

Stop the Excuses!

So stop making excuses for your procrastination. Avoid the regret that will stain the memory of your life as you look back on it. You were not made for mediocrity! So get up and take action!

Today may not be the fix. But today is the step. The first of many. You are not likely going to experience success in the next couple steps of your life. But you are going to step anyway because stepping is the ONLY way to get down that road. And in stepping, you have already succeeded by choosing to live, to truly and deeply come alive and live profoundly! And that, my friend, is not failure.

It’s time.

Today.

Now.

Go.

And on the way there, Please Share!

If you think this article could be of help to others, please Tweet and Share it.

What have you always dreamt of doing but haven’t yet taken action on?

What’s holding you back?

What has helped you get up and get going on those things you have acted upon?

I truly value your thoughts and would love you to share them in the comments below.

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Yep, excuses are deadly killers of dreams and possibilities, aren’t they? “Someday,” “maybe,” “I wish,” “yeah but,” “I can’t,” “don’t know how,” and the endless like are the worn out words and phrases of fear and the self-imposed prisons of stagnation. They are sad words that trap us in the muck of inaction and tie us to the past.

Thanks for your comment, John. You are a man of action, that much is evident. I appreciate that example, your living inspiration. That, it seems, can be your byline: “Bring it on!”

Very inspirational! I’ve recently started a new project which has many moving parts and technical things to learn and pass through before I can actually get the end product launched, all of which is new for me. However I know I am on the right track because as I take each step, I’m getting the help I need before I even knew I needed help, if that makes sense. Just being guided in the right direction, and keep on getting the signs that this is the way forward. Excited to see what the final result will look like.

I’m so intrigued! Your project sounds like a handful, but yes, I know what you mean about people and other forms of help showing up at the right time. That’s a wonderful feeling, isn;t it? To know that you;re on the right track, that things are unfolding as they should. Such a confidence booster as we step into the unknown! Is it a project that will show up online? Something we will be able to see and enjoy with you? I hope so. You definitely pricked my curiosity!

Hey Ken. You are 100% right… I’ve been letting my planning and perfectionism stand in the way of actually taking action and getting things done. Many times I have sat back and watched my goals remain way off in the distance without making the progress that I need.

Thanks for the timely reminder that I need to take more action, while allowing setbacks and mistakes to occur and then correct as required.

I think we all do that to one degree or another. There’s seems to be something in us that wants things to be just right. And I don’t think it’s all bad. The perfectionist quality is one I share with you! And truth is, I kinda like it. I like the end product when I’ve sweated and worked my knuckles to the bone to perfect it, so to speak.

The biggest problem with perfectionism is when it prevents us from moving forward, when we expect it to be just right BEFORE we take action on it. What I’ve learned (and it’s taken a long, long time to learn it!) is that I can now allow my perfectionism to reveal itself over time as I improve at and on the project I’m working on. I’ve also developed an internal “good enough” button I can push when I catch myself worrying too much about the quality of a thing I know is pretty good and is now taking too much time with diminishing returns.

Glad you found this post of value, Andrew! Have an awesome week of action!

Hi Ken, Hi Everyone!
This is a great article Ken! You cover the whole fear of starting issue so well! There is energy and exhilaration once you DO start – a whole yippie, young-child feeling of “I DID it!” It’s worth the doing just to experience that! Then you know you CAN do it and you do it again and again and again – like Edison! 🙂
But as you said, first you have to start!
Lori

It’s always wonderful to see you here! And thank you for your kind words. You capture that joy of accomplishment so well in your comment: “yippie, young-child feeling of ‘I DID it!'” It really is like that! I can get very giddy at each successful step of a project too. I love to see something unfold as I work on it. It’s great to see the end product, for sure. But the process is also rewarding. I wonder if you felt that way as you completed chapters or sections of your book, especially at the end as you reworked it without the validation of quotes that you recently spoke about.

Edison is such a great example of that stick-to-it-iveness, of following every step by another one until all the pieces fit snugly together. Thanks for sharing that, Lori!

I love the way you worded that, Wendy! “Exciting” and “liberating”! So true! I wish I would have included those ideas in the post now! 🙂

I’m thrilled you enjoyed what I wrote and am so glad you too are learning the same lesson we all have to learn as we take appropriate action toward living out our lives in amazing ways, reaching closer to our potential even if we fear the next step. “Liberating” is the perfect word for that!

hello ken
how are you?
thanks for sharing this article because it jolts one up as well stirs up motivation.
It’s funny but i have read 3 different blogs today and you are all having the same message, ‘take that step’.
johns blog talked about being an inbetweener, sibyl talked on safe net and frank talked on pushing through
sitting down folding ones arms, doesn’t get us anywhere at all.
it takes just one step and sometimes that step could throw open a window of opportunities.
making excuses only result in procrastination and a lack of action.
Thanks for sharing

Life is good. Thanks for asking! I hope all is well in your neck of the woods as well!

Maybe all those similar posts (John, Sybil, Frank and I) are a sign! Hmmm. 🙂

You’re right, Ayo. We do sometimes metaphorically fold our arms like that, don’t we? It’s almost like we dare the world to just try to get us to move. But there is so much possibility if we would just break through our doubts and fears and get up and take action. Procrastination is the silent killer of dreams and amazing futures that never unfold as such. So sad to think of all that could be if everyone would take those steps that, like you say, so often opens other windows of opportunity.

Thank you so much, Elena! You made my day with your kind words! It is always a thrill when something we write touches or lifts or otherwise positively affects others, isn’t it?

That’s really why we do what we do, in hopes of leaving the world a little better, right? As for the number of Ken Werts running around, I think the world is best left with one. 🙂 But thank you so much for saying so! Talking about being left encouraged and enthused! Your comment did that for me!

I agree with you my friend, there is nothing like today to make our goals happen. There is no such thing called failure. It is all experiences that we go through and learn from. If we take action today and persist, then our dreams and goals become reality. 😉 Thanks for sharing Ken, great job

I really like the way you worded that: “There is no such thing as failure.” Every stumble truly is a stepping stone to growth. I really appreciate your optimism: Taking action. Persisting. Learning. Goals becoming reality. Such is the language of the those living life the way it was meant to be lived!

I read two posts just now about getting off my butt and getting things done. Well, okay, you worded it more diplomatically than that. But I hear the cosmic call to attention coming through cyberspace! Thanks…I needed that!

” Every single day you don’t take action; you fail one day at a time .” No one likes to fail so these very wise words will motivate me to ACTION !!
This article is filled with so much wisdom that I am going to put it on my desktop ; so I can reread over & over .

I’m thrilled you found value here! In the end, inaction means stagnation. It means dreams remain wishes and goals are left uncompleted. All growth and success in all its different manifestations require that 5-letter word, ACTION!

Thank you so very much for your kind words! And hope to see you here again real soon!

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About Me

My name is Ken Wert, the founder of M2bH. My purpose here is to teach you how to live a richer life of greater purpose and meaning, of mind-blowing possibility and deeper, more soul-satisfying happiness than you ever dreamt was possible. Join us on this happy adventure as you learn how to unlock your hidden potential to enjoy the rewards of a life well lived. Read more ...